The title page of the Piano Trio with String Orchestra bears the date “Easter, 1933”. The composition, however, was not premiered until August 31st, 1963 at the Luzern Music Festival. The score of the trio was fortunately discovered by Harry Halbreich at Mrs. Charlotte Martinů’s house in Vieux Moulin, 30 years after it was written. The fact that Bohuslav Martinů decided to withhold the piece from publication was probably caused by a critical assessment by the prominent Schott publishing house in May, 1933. It reads: "We received the autograph of your Trio and studied it with great interest. It is a masterpiece, as all works coming from your pen. To be completely open and honest, however, we do not find this piece as much inspired as other compositions of yours. To be specific, it is the slow movement that seems a little bit pulseless and uneventful. We would like to recommend you to revise the second movement and see if greater plasticity can be reached by some cuts or by a marked tune." Still in summer 1933, Bohuslav Martinů wrote a composition called Concertino, H 232, for the same set of instruments, the same number of movements and the same starting key of C as the previous piece. The Schott publishing house then accepted Concertino as a substitute for Trio.
Both compositions are stylistically similar and document Martinů’s neo-classic inspiration of the 1930s. The composer, however, did not use a single melodic motif of the trio, nor did he apply the same movement order in the concertino. The second movement of the Piano Trio with String Orchestra, for example, is slow and lyric, while in the Concertino, a playful and happy Moderato comes second. The Trio is conceived as a concerto grosso in which polyphonic and polytonal sections as well as short melodious motifs with ever-changing, rich rhythms are to be found. The Trio is a composition full of life, with delicately worked-out details.
Sandra Bergmannová, programme of the Bohuslav Martinů Festival's concert, 8. 12. 1998